


to fate unanswered

by arouria



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: "I had a nightmare", F/M, LadyNoir - Freeform, pain ? pain.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 14:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5589208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arouria/pseuds/arouria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It should have been her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to fate unanswered

**Author's Note:**

> if you are in pain because of this you can blame mahalicious who decided this needed to be a 12/10 on the angst scale. it's not /really/ a 12/10 tho because fairy tale endings are a thing that happens // cross-posted from a tumblr ask prompt "I had a nightmare" 
> 
> enjoy friends ~

* * *

 

 

Marinette Cheng should be dead.

 

There isn’t any reason that she should still be standing here, staring out over the the city lights with her fingers wrapped around a railing on a rooftop that feels worlds away.

Wind whips wildly through her hair, lashing painfully against her skin and twisting it’s way straight through the hollows of her bones.

Her breath is hard and heavy and each shaky intake rattles around in her lungs like a curse, a constant reminder that every empty heartbeat comes with a price.

She should be dead. She almost wishes she was.

She tilts her head back to the stars she can’t see and her shaking breaths turn into heaving sobs, broken and beaten and uncontrollably heart-wrenching. 

_How can she do this without him?_

Her iron grip on the railing fails and she collapses against the concrete rooftop, unable to find the strength to stand in the face of the beautiful city she’d failed so miserably to protect. Another sob tears through her as memories flash in the forefront of her mind, dark and haunting and utterly devastating.

_We should wait, he tells her, green eyes flashing in uncertainty._

_We don’t have time to wait, she bites back, hard and uncaring and falsely determined. She isn’t any of those things, she screams to herself, she cares she cares she cares—_

_You’ve made a mistake in seeking me out, children. His eyes hold the kind of absolute violence that shoots fear straight into her bloodstream and holds her breath hostage in her lungs. The voice is hard (cold, so cold, even colder then her own) and the strike is too fast for her to dodge._

_There is a scream that echoes against the walls and straight into the hearts of anything and everyone around them, and blood, so much blood, snaking, pooling, the horrible sound of thousands of fluttering wings all at once._

_The scream is hers, the blood is his._

_“My Lady.”_

A fierce sense of determination suddenly overcomes her and she clamps her teeth together in a renowned effort to choke down the sob lingering in the back of her throat.

“No.” She breathes to herself, voice broken but hard, “Not yet.”

Her grip finds the railing once more and she hauls herself from the ground with a kind strength she doesn’t entirely remember possessing.

She breathes, once, like he’d tell her too. She lets the city lights flicker carefully against the smooth material of her suit, around the edges her mask and down the trails of tearstains lingering on her checks.

She knows what she has to do.

She closes her eyes, lets the wind toy in her hair and lace through her fingertips like the whisper of a guide.

And she jumps.

 

* * *

 

It takes her over two hours to figure out which room is his.

It probably would have taken her less, she reasons, if she had entered through the lobby like a normal person. However, Marinette Dupain-Cheng is currently banned from this particular establishment under the authoritative orders of Gabriel Agreste, which leaves her only viable option scaling the building in the middle of the night.

She still almost turns back when she finally finds him.

Every bone in her body screams in agony, every bloodcell begs her to leave, but she can’t. She won’t. Not again.

She opens the window.

Adrien Agreste lies entirely too still on the hospital sheets, positioned neatly by whoever had been the last to touch him. Her entire world pinholes down to just him on that bed, too pale, too battered, too _still_.

His chest rises and Marinette falls where she stands, flinging a hand to her mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle every unspeakable word that attempts to tear from her throat. Tears prick in her eyes despite her resolve and she forces herself to take shallow, even breaths to dispel the gut-wrenching sobs that threaten to shake her.

She blindly throws her body to the edge of his bed and it’s all she can do to stay on her knees there beside him, head in her hands and the horrible hospital scents of overused anesthetics and death clinging to her airways. 

“I’m so sorry,” She chokes out, voice cracked and harsh through the tightness in her throat.

“I should have listened to you,” She sniffs, slowly, guiltily, bringing her gaze to his face. Her lungs burn and suddenly it’s like something bursts inside her, gushing and flooding and it’s everything she can do just to keep herself from _screaming_.

“I— I know, I know I don’t have any right to be here,” She heaves in time to the shrill mechanic sound of his pulse, her ears are ringing.

“But I can’t— I can’t just,” She’s standing—how can she be standing?— ah, no, she can’t stand, after all. She just barely catches herself and the edge of his railing, knee propped up against the mattress (it’s a real mattress, big and plush and probably ordered specially for him, for Adrien Agreste, for Chat Noir, by the same man who banned her from ever laying eyes on his son again) and she sinks beside him. She can lay here, right? That can’t be a sin, can it? He’s so warm, even now he’s still so _warm_.

“I keep having nightmares,” Her voice is nothing but a whisper by his ear, she almost doesn’t hear it herself.

“They’re all the same, of course, and I’m not really complaining, you know? They’re mine, I deserve them.” She shakes and she wants nothing more then to press her face into the hollow of his collarbone, breathe in that deep airy scent of his. He’s always reminded her of the way the city wind felt in the darkest hours of the night, cool and freeing and fierce all wrapped into one, whipping over rooftops and weaving though backstreet alleyways, beautiful, agile, unstoppable.

She doesn’t dare touch him.

“You’re in them, you know, so am I.” She continues, mostly because she can’t find it in her to stop, “Your dad is there too, usually, but sometimes it’s just me and you and that big, dark room. Those are the worst.” 

She clamps down on her lip and tries to remember how to breathe, “There’s so much blood, Chat. Did you know I almost couldn’t transform tonight just because my suit is red? I screamed and screamed and screamed the first time I transformed again, after they brought you here. How pathetic is that? Heroine of Paris done in by the color red.”

She’s rambling and she knows it, she knows she should stop, and even more then that she knows she should leave. 

“I wish I was stronger, Chat. I wish I was strong enough to stay away from you and I wish I was strong enough not to have to be. You’re so much stronger then I am. It should have been me, it—it should have been…” She doesn’t even notice when her transformation fails her, mask dropping in the softest of golden lights, curling down her body until the suit disappears altogether. 

“You should have let me die, Chat. Tikki says Ladybugs are destined to fall to Hawkmoth in battle, that’s just how it _works_ you stupid cat!” Another sob racks her body and she’s so _angry_ , at herself and the universe and fate and at _him_ , for loving her too much, for loving her at all.

She squeezes her eyes shut and throws a hand to her mouth again, desperate to keep her voice under control. 

“Stupid cat,” She sobs into her palm, “You stupid, stupid cat, trying to mess with destiny, getting yourself into this horrible disaster, why didn’t you just let me _die_ , you stupid, stupid—“

“Your insults are horrible as always, My Lady.”

Her entire world stops spinning.

She snaps her eyes open, breath chained in the back of her throat, heart caught mid-beat against her ribcage.

She’d know the green of his eyes anywhere. Recognize the twist of his smirk in any life or dream or disaster alike. 

“C-Chat?”

His green eyes blink lazily back at her, loving and careful and just as earth-shattering as she remembers, wild blonde hair falling softly over the edges of his lashes as that telltale ghost of a smile curves it’s way across his lips. 

“Hey, Marinette.” 

**Author's Note:**

> p.s. you can all thank maha for telling me i wasn't allowed to kill anyone off in this fic bc i 100% would have //stillsalty//


End file.
